Amnesty International Condemns US Providing Anti-Personnel Mines to Ukraine
Amnesty International immediately issued a statement condemning the US announcement of providing anti-personnel mines to Ukraine, and Ukrainian front lines appear to have intensified attacks from armored vehicles and on foot.
“This decision is reckless and a deeply disappointing setback for a president who once agreed that landmines put more civilians at greater risk,” Ben Linden, Amnesty International USA’s director of advocacy, said in a statement on the 20th. “It is frankly shocking that President Biden would make such a consequential and dangerous decision just before his public legacy is sealed in the history books.”
Reuters said on the 21st, “The US decision to provide anti-personnel mines to Ukraine expands the use of a weapon that the international community has long condemned because of the danger to innocent civilians,” adding, “It reflects another in a long line of US policy shifts on this controversial issue over the past 30 years.” U.S. officials said on the 20th that Ukraine needs mines to help stop Russia’s advance on the battlefield, AP reported.
Russian troops are moving to the front lines with smaller ground units rather than more heavily protected armored vehicles, and as their advances accelerate, anti-personnel mines are needed to stop foot attacks, AP said.
In a report on the situation on the 19th, AP reported that “about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory is now controlled by Russia, and the invisible geographical border is constantly changing, and the closer a person gets to that border, the more dangerous life becomes,” and “There’s a reason why the no-man’s-land between Russian and Ukrainian forces is called the Gray Zone because there’s almost no life. Ashen houses, charred trees, and blackened craters left by shells from 1,000 days of war stretch as far as the eye can see.” The Pentagon has been providing anti-tank mines to Ukraine throughout the war since the Russian invasion.
On the 21st, U.S. Defense Secretary Austin said, “The Biden administration will allow Ukraine to use anti-personnel mines provided by the United States to slow down Russia’s advance on the battlefield,” and that the new policy would provide Ukraine with “non-permanent anti-personnel mines.”
These mines are electrically detonated over time and lose their explosive power. “This shift shows a clear and belated decline in risk aversion as the Biden administration watches the troubling battlefield developments in Ukraine and worries about how U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia might change when President-elect Trump takes office on Jan. 20,” Bradley Bowman, director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the AP.
The mines the U.S. has provided range from larger, more destructive mines that can take out tanks to smaller anti-personnel variants that are buried just below the surface and detonated by the weight of a person.
The Biden administration is sending Ukraine a limited-capacity anti-personnel mine, the “non-permanent mines,” which are electrically fused and powered by batteries that don’t explode when the batteries run out and can be deactivated in four hours to two weeks, the AP reported.
“We’ve received assurances from Ukraine that they’ll limit harm to civilians,” a U.S. official told the AP, requesting anonymity.
Ukraine will use the mines on its own territory, but it has not yet been able to use them. They told the AP they would not be installed in civilian areas.
Throughout the war, the U.S. provided Ukraine with larger anti-tank mines, which were also battery-powered and deactivated over time, called the Remote Anti-Armor Mine System (RAAM), which can be set to self-destruct after four or 48 hours, causing mines to disperse when fired and damage armored vehicles.
President Bill Clinton aimed to limit the use of mines and join the treaty, but Republican President George W. Bush backed out after widespread opposition from military leaders.
The Bush administration’s policy was that the U.S. would use permanent mines (mines that do not deactivate automatically) until 2010, after which they would no longer be used.
The U.S. mine policy was changed when Democratic President Obama ordered a review of U.S. policy, which called for “no military use of mines anywhere in the world except in the defense of South Korea.” Republican President Trump reversed the Obama administration’s ban in January 2020 and removed geographic restrictions on the use of “deactivated mines over time.”
Trump’s “landmine permit policy” was reversed when Democratic President Biden took office, changing it to “banning the use of anti-personnel mines outside the Korean Peninsula.”
The Biden administration’s decision, announced in June 2022, stated that “all mines other than those necessary for the defense of the Republic of Korea will be destroyed.”
As of 2022, the U.S. stockpile of anti-personnel mines was estimated at about 3 million.
U.S. officials did not disclose “the criteria and quantity of mines deemed necessary for the defense of the Republic of Korea” at the time of the policy decision, and this aid to Ukraine appears to be an extension of the resumption of military production in the supply of South Korea’s defensive anti-personnel mine inventory.
The 20th Conference of the Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in November 2022 stated that it “condemns the use of anti-personnel mines by any actor, anywhere, at any time.” Human Rights Watch, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said on March 30, 2022, “Russia is using banned anti-personnel mines in Ukraine,” and “urges international condemnation and an immediate cessation of their use.”
Since March 28, 2022, at least 40 countries have condemned or expressed concern over Russia’s use of anti-personnel mines in Ukraine, including Albania, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, condemned the use of anti-personnel mines in Ukraine in March 2022.
Russia is a party to the 1996 Protocol II to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which prohibits and restricts landmines, booby traps, and other devices.
The use of landmines in Ukraine was condemned by the Special Envoy for Universalization on February 3, 2023, as a violation of the Mine Ban Treaty, Human Rights Watch said.
As of June 2023, Human Rights Watch had identified at least 13 types of anti-personnel mines and 13 types of anti-personnel mines used in the Ukraine conflict, compared to a previous 2022 background briefing that identified at least seven types of anti-personnel mines and six types of anti-personnel mines.
The international convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines is specifically stated in the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockion, Production and Transfer of Anti-Human Mines and on Their Destruction, adopted on September 18, 1997.
Human Rights Watch said, “There is widespread agreement that any explosive device capable of being detonated by unintentional human action, regardless of its label or design intention, is an anti-personnel mine and is therefore prohibited under the Mine Ban Treaty. This is the view of the majority of the 164 States Parties to the treaty, and is shared by the International Committee of the Red Cross.”